With preparation for elections “going well,” Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham announced yesterday that government is extending an invitation to international observers to monitor this year’s general election process.
“For the first time in the history of The Bahamas, the government of The Bahamas will say publicly as I now say that any international organization that wishes to monitor the elections in The Bahamas, send monitors to The Bahamas to see how the process goes, etcetera, to be able to comment upon it, are free and welcome to do so,” he told reporters in Grand Bahama.
“They can let us know and we will facilitate them and accommodate them — whether it be OAS, whether it is the United States of America, whether it is the U.N., whoever monitors the elections, the Jimmy Carter Group, whoever monitors the elections in the world, if they want to come to The Bahamas to see how the election is done they can come because we are going to have an open and a fair and transparent process.”
The nation’s chief executive was in town for the commissioning of the new multiplex facility at the Rand Memorial Hospital and made the revelation at a press conference at the Office of the Prime Minister.
The next general election must be called by the end of May 2012.
However, while he declined to give any indication as to when the election will be called, Ingraham pointed out that before that could happen, several things must be in place to ensure an orderly process.
“It is unthinkable, and has happened the last time, for the Parliamentary Commissioner to hear the House of Assembly is dissolved by an announcement on the radio,” he said.
“The first thing a prime minster does is to find out how are we, in respect to the preparation for the election, what else do we need to do, etcetera, etcetera.”
Once government is satisfied that all of those things are done, then, he assured, a date will be fixed.
“We don’t fix dates because we wake up one morning and say let’s go,” Ingraham said. “We’re trying to have as orderly a process as possible. ”
In that vein, the prime minister said, government’s attention has turned to Bahamian students living abroad to allow those who are entitled to register to vote.
He then explained their progress to date.
“We would have been to Miami and Miami would have had representatives from Atlanta, Washington and New York so that the Parliamentary Commissioner could have explained to all of them how it is done,” said Ingraham.
Next, the prime minister said, Parliamentary Registrar officials will travel to Canada.
“I think London has already been done, I’m not sure. We have to make a little tweak in our law to accommodate the situation with students in Jamaica, Barbados and Trinidad because the way we wrote the law it only permits it happen at a place where we have a mission,” he said, “and we don’t have a mission in any of those places, so we have to tweak the law to be able to accommodate it.”
Closer to the 150,000 mark today than they were last week at the start of the dissemination of the voter’s cards, Prime Minister Ingraham said the goal is to have the maximum number of people registered to vote.
“We’d like to encourage full participation by the citizenry of The Bahamas in the electoral process — those who are qualified to vote,” he said.
Referencing a newspaper article about a Jamaican national who was allegedly found with a Bahamian voter’s card and passport, Ingraham said he anticipates that those involved will be brought to justice.
“I expect that in due course, when investigations are concluded, that charges are likely to be laid against persons who facilitated such a thing,” he said.
Source: The Freeport News
